11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi
My DS sat the KE test on Saturday. He was very quiet when he came out and only said how hard he had found it (especially the VR part).

A day later he came out of his shell and told us how disappointed he was that he couldn't complete the maths and had to guess the last 4 questions as time was running out.

We had told him prior to the exam it is set out so that most children cannot complete the tests so not to be disappointed if he didnt.

Maths is his strongest subject and he was looking forward to the test and he had set himself a personal goal to finish all the maths questions without guessing.

We personally believe that our DS has done exceptional well to be in a position where he can sit grammar school test as he is ADHD and Dsylexia.

After more conversation with our DS he seems to think that he 40/50 % of the VR and 70% in NVR and 90+% in the maths.

When we have asked our DS for estimations in the practice papers he was normally only a couple of % off.

Bishop Vesey is his first choice and he seemed to be a bit disappointed that the test wasnt more challenging and he finished the maths papers 25 mins before the end of the test. He seems to think that he done pretty well but is worried that with it being so easy and with only 45 VR questions a couple of which he knew the answers but could not spell the words it impacts his percentage greatly even though he feels he got 40/45 approx.

Only the Handsworth Grammar and Queen Marys to go looking forward to having my dining room back and free of practice papers.

Good Look Everyone.

Hi

Please read the thread titled 'Sat 8th Test day'. I think you will be reassured. It seems that :

1) EVERYONE seems to have found the test hard according to the threads posted.

2) ALL the kids who we know that took the test say it was hard.

3) Everyone appeared to have found the Maths (the problem maths). My son's favourite and strongest subject is Maths and he was disappointed that he left 3 unanswered and found various others hard. He also found certain English sections hard. This may be because he didn't do very well.....he felt confident about some sections - we shall see. There is hope until the results suggest otherwise - in which case there are other tests to look out for!

Good Luck.

The exam is always significantly harder than the majority of other 11+ exams. If the standard is similar to previous years then I'm sure we will find that raw scores percentages are relatively low.

The following are an example of the raw/standardised scores from a couple of years ago:-

I did note the raw to Standardised conversion figures at the approximate pass mark for a child of my sons age (end Dec).

For Maths/Numerical 44/82=114 & 46/82=116

For Verbal 64/100=114 & 67/100=116

For NVR 50/70=114 & 52/70=116

So you can see for that year (for a child with a Dec birthday) the low end pass scores were 54%, 64% & 72% for Maths, VR & NVR respectively.

When it came to the real test a year later, my son did very badly in the VR section but his Maths and NVR scores lifted him to a good score of 339 in the end. well inside the score for 5-Ways but not quite enough for Camp Hill Boys in that year.

I'm afraid that trying to predict the outcome is almost impossible.

Thanks KenR

This is what we thought after reading all the forums. Our DS is a natural at maths and we figured this would bump up his score and fully expect him to get approx 130+ after standardisation.

But on the downside because of his Dsylexia we are hoping he gets anything above 80 on VR/English which would be a bonus. The deciding factor will be his NVR which again he is very naturally good at but said he guessed about 10 questions in NVR. So hopefully this will be still good enough to get 115+ which would be close to the pass mark required.

But this is as you say approximations of what we think he his capable of he has not scored lower than 95% in any maths practice papers (key stage 3 level 4-6 math papers without calculator and in less time, Bond 5th math papers and more 5th papers, GCSE foundation papers etc).

In his NFER papers he was close to 95% which we used as mocks in the main Birmingham Central Library.

I made as deal with my DS that if he got 100% in any of his practice papers i would give him £5 (this has cost me dearly in NVR and Maths).

So keeping our fingers crossed, its not his first choice but this might be ideal for him because it is hard for everyone and you cannot be heavily tutored unlike the NFER exams.